Halloween might be a holiday, but it doesn’t mean the fun can’t start during the work day.

With the spooky holiday falling on a Tuesday this year, perhaps HR can use it as an opportunity to boost staff engagement and improve team collaboration, while having a bit of fun at the same time.

Here are some fun ideas for your HR team to use this Halloween!

 

1.      Spooky Dress-up

Of course this is the most obvious (and probably easiest!) choice for a Halloween activity. Your HR team could encourage all employees to dress up with a prize for the best costume, or you could ask departments to dress up as each other for a few laughs (hopefully without offending anyone or hurting anyone’s ego..). As for HR, choose a human-resources related costume, like Roz from Monsters Inc (‘you forgot to turn in your paperwork last night’) Toby from The Office, or a group of vampires, because HR can be a real pain in the neck.

2.       Halloween-themed games

Want to turn your teams from acquaintances to broom-mates? Bobbing for apples, pumpkin patch hunting, and the classic ‘wrap the mummy’ game are just some options you could use this Halloween over your lunch break. This allows employees to engage not just with the company but also with each other, helping to build internal relationships and encourage teamwork.

3.       Trick or Treat Yo’ Self

Are the departments in your organisation existing parallel to each other, barely interacting? This could be used as a great way to get different departments to interact more with each other, and will have an impact on the overall business dynamic. Encourage employees to bring in sweets per department and allow others to ‘trick-or-treat’ around the office, getting to know each other simultaneously. Bone appetit!

4.        Dangerous decorations

There are loads of great ways you can make your desk more Halloween-prepped, from covering it in cobwebs to hanging fake bats from the ceilings. This provides you with yet another effective way to drive conversations and collaboration between departments. Here’s one idea for an office decoration for the more dramatic departments:

Engaging with holidays of any sort throughout the year can be great for boosting engagement in your company (except Valentine’s day… We strongly recommend against celebrating this one too loudly at work). Whether it be to help new starters settle in or encourage teams to collaborate more often with one another, you’ll undoubtedly see the benefits and your teams will better interact moving forward!

Join us next Friday for more fabby HR fun on the Youmanage blog, and if you’d like to find out more about how Youmanage can benefit your business, check out our product page.